Moments of Glad Grace

“Beautifully written and perfectly executed from first to last sentence.” — Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi

“A richly layered journey, charmingly told.” — Plum Johnson, author of They Left Us Everything

A moving and witty memoir about a daughter’s evolving relationship with her aging father and their shared journey to belonging.

The story begins as a trip from Canada to Ireland in search of genealogical data and documents. Being 80 and in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, Joe invites his daughter Alison to come along as his research assistant, which might have worked very well had she any interest — any at all — in genealogy.

Very quickly, the father-daughter pilgrimage becomes more comical than fruitful, more of a bittersweet adventure than a studious mission. And rather than rigorous genealogy, their explorations move into the realm of family and forgiveness, the primal search for identity and belonging, and questions about responsibility to our ancestors and the extent to which we are shaped by the people who came before us.

Though continually bursting with humor, Moments of Glad Grace is a story about identity, history, and ultimately becomes a song of appreciation for the precious and limited time we have with our parents.